Big Companies Navigating Innovation with Tom Daly, Founder of Relevant Ventures

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Tom Daly, founder of Relevant Ventures. Tom and I talk about the challenges big companies have when trying to navigate technology and market changes. And what you can do to avoid some of the common obstacles and barriers to innovation and transformation. Let's get started. 

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Interview Transcript  with Tom Daly, Founder of Relevant Ventures

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Tom Daly. He is the founder of Relevant Ventures. Welcome Tom. 

Tom Daly: Thank you very much, Brian. Pleasure to be here, speaking with you. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. You have had a lot of experience in this innovation space. You worked with companies like UPS and ING and I think most recently, Coca-Cola and a lot of the innovation efforts around that world. So I am excited to have you on the show to talk about some of the new things you're doing and I think more importantly, some of the things you've learned over the years.

Tom Daly: I started doing this work before people called it digital transformation or innovation. The Earth cooled, at about the same time I began getting my head around this. I'm an advertising guy to begin with, and I can't prove it, but I think I created the world's first dedicated 30 sec TV commercial to a website. UPS. 

In that process, I picked up some vocabulary and I learned some things about how websites, quote unquote work, so that when people started calling, you know, back in the mid-nineties wanting to talk to somebody about the web or the internet, the calls came to me. And it was during that process where I started to build new networks within UPS, learn about new things going on at UPS and discover some of the opportunities. It's been a while. 

Brian Ardinger: You talk a lot about this ability to turn big ships in small spaces. Talk a little bit about what that means to you and, and what the challenges really are for corporations in, in this whole innovation space. 

Tom Daly: The idea of turning big ships in small spaces actually goes back to my boss's boss at UPS who noticed I was toiling. UPS has a reputation as a conservative company. A little bit unfair, there's some truth to that, but not quite what people think.

It's actually a very, very innovative company and has been for its entire history, but it is collaborative. There's a lot of debate and a lot of discussion. So getting new things done, driving new ideas that my boss to encourage me, you'll get there, Tom, but it's like turning a battleship in the Chattahoochee.

So, I don't know where listeners are, but imagine a pretty darn small body of water and a really big ship that you're trying to turn. So, a lot of back and forth, a lot of kissing babies, shaking hands, and just getting, you know politics, but in a good positive way to kind of really understand interests and concerns and build a better program, a better idea.

So that's the idea, and it was encouraging to me. So, this notion of turning big ships in small spaces, it seems to be, to the degree I have any superpowers, that's the one I'm able to kind of figure out how to help larger organizations figure out how to extract value from, you know, kind of what's coming up around the corner.

Brian Ardinger: Obviously you've seen a lot of changes, whether they're technology changes or business model changes that have happened over the years. Where do companies typically run into the problems when they see something on the emerging horizon and they're saying, we've gotta do something about this. What goes through their mind and what can they do to better prepare for some of these drastic changes?

Tom Daly: The thing companies can do to help themselves most be prepared for big ships in the world that we all live and compete in, is, you know, the twin keys of openness and acceptance. Being open to an idea is really important, but it is only half the battle. 

Being accepting of the implications of those ideas is really key and the classic example would be Kodak. You know, Kodak early in, open to the idea of digital photography. But equally unaccepting of its implications. So they didn't jump in, they didn't do the things they needed